


I Love You

by GoldenTruth813



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Harry Potter Next Generation, M/M, Requited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 21:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813
Summary: James has always loved Teddy. Teddy just took a little longer to understand it all.





	I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble in response to a tumblr request for Jeddy I Love Yous.

Teddy knows James loves him. He’s said it a million times. Teddy can’t can’t think of a time in his life when he didn’t know James loved him, that he was James’s favorite.

“Love you,” James whispers at three years old, climbing onto Teddy’s back and pretending Teddy is a horse. Teddy thinks he’s too old to still be playing horsey but he likes the way James laughs, and he especially likes the way Harry smiles at him when he makes James happy.

“I love you, Teddy,” James whispers at five, clutching at Teddy’s hand and crying when he walks through Platform 9 ¾ and leaves James behind.

“I love you,” is signed at the bottom of the drawing James sends Teddy when he’s seven, a photo of James in Hufflepuff colors instead of red and gold. “I’ll be like you,” he wrote in dark yellow crayon.

“You’re not disappointed are you, Teddy? You know I love you?” James whispers quietly at eleven years old when he’s sorted into Gryffindor and not Hufflepuff, away from Teddy.

“Ah, Teddy, my man. Everyone loves you don’t you know. Me included,” James says with conviction at fifteen, ignoring the commotion of the family and hugging Teddy tightly after he and Victorie break up over Christmas holidays.

“I love you, Teddy,” James says almost defiantly the day of his seventeenth birthday. Teddy swallows down the lump in his throat as he tells James he’ll love other people too, that he’s young.

“Fuck you! I still love you, you giant fucking arsehole,” James yells the night he leaves Hogwarts. The night he expects Teddy to turn him down again. Even in his anger, James is beautiful.

James looks so sure of himself, so proud. He wants Teddy in a way he cannot ignore, doesn’t want to ignore, and in a way which it took Teddy years to understand. James’s skin is warm, and he tastes like butterbeer as Teddy presses him down into the sun-warmed grass and kisses him speechless.

“I love you,” Teddy whispers back for the first time.

But it won’t be the last time.


End file.
